


Fresno

by SharkAria



Series: 1998 [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Entrapdak, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, The thrill of the 90s is alive in Fresno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 06:21:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21157025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharkAria/pseuds/SharkAria
Summary: Hordak isn’t quite sure how his oddball astronomy lab partner Entrapta has ended up in his shitty off-campus apartment at two in the morning...but here she is, maniacally soldering new components onto his robotics project.The Entrapdak '90s California college AU you didn't know you needed.





	Fresno

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**Freak on a Leash**

Hordak isn’t quite sure how his oddball astronomy lab partner Entrapta has ended up in his shitty off-campus apartment at two in the morning, with the green Christmas lights around the ceiling perimeter illuminating his stuffy bedroom, with the oversized faces of Marilyn Manson and Insane Clown Posse and Slipknot glaring down from their posters in silent, fish-eyed judgment, with “Freak on a Leash” growling from the stereo speakers and the still-too-hot, fertilizer-laden Central Valley air wafting in through his second-story window, but here she is, maniacally soldering new components onto his robotics project.

“I fixed it!” Entrapta shrieks over the distorted bass. “Now your robot can kill all the other robots.”

“Kill -- shit. No," Hordak grumbles. “That’s not what it’s supposed to do.”

“What? I can’t hear you over the screaming,” she screams.

“It’s not screaming, it’s metal.” He slams his fist against the boombox, and the CD skips to the next track, which features equal amounts of guitar thrashing. Entrapta probably won't like that one much either. He reduces the volume and scoots his stool over to the work table. “The robot is supposed to pour water from a pitcher into a glass.”

“Oh,” Entrapta says, disappointment written across her face. She twirls a finger in a long purple ponytail that seems to have a life of its own, then stands up and stretches. Her shirt hemline inches up and exposes her navel ring. “Hm. Pouring water. Doesn't seem very practical, does it?”

“As opposed to a murderbot?” Hordak looks at his ruined robot to avoid staring at Entrapta’s belly. “Look, I don’t care what the damn thing does. I just need to get the grade.”

“Grades. Ugh! They’re so irrelevant!” She flops back into the chair.

“Perhaps, but I need a good one.” Hordak pulls his cuff down over the edge of his birthmark. “You’re not even enrolled in that class. Why are you tinkering with my project?”

“I hate to see a good robot go to waste,” she says, and she cackles, and the crystal pendant on her choker bounces at her throat. “Besides, your robot was screwed up so bad that it wasn’t even going to turn on, much less do the pouring thing,” she adds.

Hordak’s face flushes, but he can’t argue with the truth. In astronomy lab, he shares top marks with Entrapta, but he’s hopeless at this lower division robotics crap.

“Lemme make a few tweaks and I’ll get it to work the way you want. Grab my notes, would you? They’re in my bag.” She nods her chin toward the Jansport on the floor.

Hordak grabs a fistful of plush keychains and unzips the backpack. _Why are you helping me?_ he thinks but doesn’t ask as he extracts a pink binder with Power Puff Girl stickers plastered across the front. He should have expected that.

“Open it to the ‘proximity sensors’ tab and hold it up in front of my face,” Entrapta commands.

Hordak flips through dozens of hand-drawn schematics before reaching the correct section. Each page looks like it could garner a Nobel. “Jesus,” he says, running a hand through his greasy blue hair. “How did _you_ end up at Fresno State?”

She shrugs. “I’m from around here. Hanford."

“Not familiar with it. I’m from Massachusetts.” Which is basically a different planet compared to this melanoma-inducing hellhole.

“It's an ag town about thirty minutes away. OK, turn the page for me. Ever hear of Superior Dairy? They make hella cute ice cream sandwiches.”

Hordak wrinkles his nose at the West Coast slang. “Ice cream sandwiches or not, the armpit of California is no place for a person with scientific expertise like yours.”

“Armpit? Oh, no no. That’s Stockton. Or maybe Bakersfield?” she laughs, as if Hordak could render judgment in the Golden State’s underarm competition.

“Still,” Hordak pushes. “If I had a choice, I would go somewhere else.” He doesn’t have a choice, though, not for now anyway. The inheritance money is off limits as long as Prime retains control of the trust, and student loans haven’t been an option since cousin Catra stole Hordak’s social security number and ruined his credit. Fresno State has been the only place -- so far -- to offer Hordak a full ride.

Entrapta glances at Hordak out of the corner of her eye before returning to the robot. “I was supposed to apply to a bunch of universities, but then somebody donated an old telescope to my high school, and I dragged it up to the roof of the gym and modified it with a couple spare parts I, uh, borrowed. You don’t need that much stuff to increase the magnification, you know --”

“What does this have to do with Fresno?” Hordak redirects her.

“Oh, right. So I kind of forgot about college, but then one day last summer my calc teacher dragged me to the registrar’s office here and the admissions lady saw my test scores and she sorta threw me into the physics department. All I had to do was sign some papers. Do you only listen to Korn?” she veers.

“No, I don’t only listen to Korn," Hordak mutters. He hits the stereo shuffle button and something by the Deftones begins to play. “You should be running experiments in some top secret lab at MIT,” he continues, not without envy. “Some inner sanctum where you need six different security clearances.”

Entrapta doesn't seem to be paying much attention to Hordak anymore, but she looks up from the tangle of wires before her and smiles lopsidedly and mutters something that sounds like "classy."

Hordak drops it. He fiddles with a capacitor for a while, but eventually gives up and studies Entrapta. She has smooth light brown skin and usually wears thick, gloppy eye makeup, and she favors shirts with weird necklines and baggy pants with holes worn into the cuffs from the heels of her sneakers. If he saw her on the street, he’d guess she was a rave deejay, not a science genius. Every so often she puckers her lips or bites her tongue or cracks a wide smile, and maybe Hordak would learn more about robotics if he spent more time staring at Entrapta’s hands instead of her mouth.

“This part of the state is alright,” Entrapta says after a long time. “There’s a naval air base in Lemoore. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of aircraft they have out there. When I was a kid I would go out to the vacant lot behind my apartment to see the strike fighters take off.”

“That’s -- cool, actually,” Hordak says, thinking of the time his prep school class took a field trip down to the Naval Academy, and trying to imagine what his brother would say about a cute California girl standing in the weeds, watching airplanes soar above her.

*_*_*_*_*_*

**Bidi Bidi Bom Bom**

“Hey, get my CDs out of the glove compartment. There’s one I want to hear.” Entrapta grabs the portable player off the dashboard with no apparent concern for the fact that her shitbox Honda CRX is hurtling south on Interstate 99 past a train of tractor-trailers.

“I’ll do that. You drive,” Hordak orders, swiping the player out of Entrapta’s hand so fast that he almost rips the adapter cable out of the cassette deck.

"Chill out, Hordak. Speed limits are for English majors.”

“I doubt that’s what the Vehicle Code says.”

“If you don’t like my driving, you’ll need to get your own car. And a license too,” Entrapta teases. “Until then, you gotta keep commuting to Kingsburg with me.”

Hordak looks out the window at the almond orchards and tries to ignore how his scalp brushes the ceiling every time Entrapta hits a pothole on the highway. Freeway, she calls it. “It’s fortunate there were two internships available at the observatory,” he comments. Maybe it’ll give him an extra edge in his Stanford transfer application.

“CD please,” she reminds him.

He opens the glove box. “Fuck,” he mutters as a road flare, a bag of Skittles, and a sheaf of unpaid parking tickets spill into the footwell.

“That one!” Entrapta yells, pointing to a loose disc with "MiX fOr sCiEnCe" scrawled on top in thick black Sharpie.

Hordak pops the CD into the player. At first, static crackles through the partially blown speakers, but it is soon blasted away by the unmistakable squeal of Scandinavian pop.

_I’m a Barbie Girl, in a Barbie world..._

Hordak covers his face with his hands. “_This_ is what you like?”

Entrapta ignores him. “Life in plastic, it’s fantastic!” She wails as she bounces in the driver's seat.

"This is horrible," he complains, but he sneaks a look at Entrapta’s jiggling cleavage. Maybe the song isn't all bad.

She flaps her arms excitedly and cries, "Oh, you have to hear the next one! It's the best!"

He seriously doubts that, but he presses the advance button anyway, and soon a peppy beat overpowers the road noise. A woman's voice rings out in coy-sounding Spanish.

"Can you understand this?" Hordak asks.

"Yeah, of course.” Entrapta accelerates too much coming out of the off-ramp curve, and Hordak clutches at the door handle. “But you don't have to be fluent to hear how this girl’s heart is pounding like crazy! _Bidi bidi bom bom . . ._" Entrapta sings along and shakes her shoulders. "I come up with all my best inventions when I’m listening to Selena," she confides.

Hordak can’t help but smile at that. "I get similar results with Nine Inch Nails.” In spite of himself, his foot is soon tapping to the song’s rhythm. It might be shallow pop, but it sure is catchy.

She stops at the light in front of Kingsburg High School and looks over to him, and unfortunately she notices his leg bopping along with the beat. "See? It’s good to try new stuff."

Hordak crosses his arms and slouches down in his seat. "I still prefer metal."

“Hmm. I like what I like, too,” she says. She grabs a bottle of orange colored pop from her cup holder and takes a glug, then grins at Hordak. At that moment, the football field lights up, and Entrapta seems to glow from within.

Bidi bidi bom bom, Hordak thinks, and his heart pounds like crazy.

*_*_*_*_*_*

**The Perfect Drug**

“You have Dr. Pepper on your sweater,” Hordak points out to cover up the fact that he’s been staring at Entrapta’s chest again.

Entrapta peers at the stain and frowns. “Nope. That’s telescope grease.” Then, because “autumn” in Fresno means the same punishingly hot sunlight that could be expected during the summertime of any normal place, Entrapta pulls the sweater over her head and exposes lots of smooth skin and a spaghetti strap tank top. She pops a French fry into her mouth. “I told you that In-n-Out is better than Carl’s Junior. I mean, ‘Hardee’s,’” she says, using air quotes.

Hordak can’t admit that he’s never eaten at a fast food restaurant before -- Prime enforced a strict low-fat, low-sodium diet back home in Winchester -- so he only says, “You’re right. As usual.”

She slurps her pop as a car zips past their table from the drive-thru exit. “You wanna break into McLane Hall when we get back to campus? There are a couple new spectrometers in the upper division lab that I want to check out.”

Hordak resists the urge to shout _What the fuck do you mean, break in_ and asks, instead, “Don’t you think we should wait until the building is open to the public?”

Entrapta furrows her brows and seems to think about it for a while. “Oh, yeah.” She drops her hands to her lap and fiddles with her mood ring. “It just sounded fun.”

“Getting arrested for trespassing doesn’t sound fun,” Hordak admonishes her. He pictures the Stanford transfer student selection committee shredding his application upon notification of felony charges, and he shudders.

“Sorry,” she says, hanging her head in clear embarrassment. “I’m still new to this whole ‘friends’ thing.”

“Oh,” says Hordak, momentarily struck dumb. "What do you mean?"

She looks at him like he should know what she’s talking about. “I just kinda suck at it. There aren't many science nerds in Hanford.”

There were plenty back in Massachusetts, but Hordak wasn't friends with them, or much of anyone else. _Family is enough, and sometimes even they are too much_, Prime would say.

“You don't suck,” Hordak insists. “You’re a good -- a great friend.” But maybe that’s not quite right, either. Do people normally fantasize about their friends being topless?

Entrapta smiles around her straw, but she still won’t meet his eyes.

“So . . .” There’s got to be some way to salvage the conversation. “How would you do it?” Hordak asks.

She looks at him with wide eyes. “Do what?”

“Break into McLane.”

“Ha! That’s easy.” Entrapta leans back and grins. “The security system is a joke. You wouldn’t believe how fast we could get past the key pad --” as she rambles on, it becomes clear to Hordak that she’s definitely already broken into the science hall before, probably more than once.

Hordak can’t help but smirk at his outrageous lab partner. Friend. Whatever.

She holds her cup out. "Anyway, congratulations."

He blinks and shakes his head. “For what?”

“For tying with me on the astronomy midterm high score."

"You don't care about grades," Hordak says.

"No, I don't," she shrugs, and she is the only person in the world who isn't annoying when she says this. "But you do!"

He does. Good grades are his ticket out of Fresno. “Thanks. And congratulations to you too.” He thuds his wax cup against hers.

“So, friend,” she says as the corner of her mouth turns up, “Can we at least take some paper from the copy machines in the library?”

Hordak sighs, but he nods. He didn’t have plans for Saturday night, anyway.

*_*_*_*_*_*

**Keep ‘em Separated**

“You and Entrapta need to split up. The two of you are setting the curve too high for the rest of the class.” Doctor Weaver doesn’t look away from her hulking computer monitor as she makes the pronouncement.

Hordak glares at his astronomy professor. “Don’t punish me and Entrapta for surpassing the fools in your class.”

“I’m not punishing you. I’m securing my tenure,” Doctor Weaver clarifies. She scratches at her sickly grey face with a jagged finger nail. “My overall class scores need to improve, and the simplest way to accomplish that is by spreading the best students out amongst the low performers.”

“Find another way. Entrapta is the only one I’ll work with.” Hordak tries to sound confident, but he can’t stop trembling. His work with Entrapta has finally brought him within reach of the Stanford transfer. And besides, unlike everything else in fucking Fresno, Entrapta is completely tolerable. Pleasant, even. The only person he looks forward to seeing all week.

“You’ll work with who I tell you to work with, or you’ll fail.” The professor hands Hordak a piece of paper with a name printed on it. “Here’s your new partner. Now leave me alone.” She waves him out of her cramped office and slams the door behind him.

“She’s such a bitch,” Hordak complains to Entrapta later, rocking on the back legs of the standard issue desk chair in her dorm room.

“Why are you worried?” Entrapta asks from the bottom bunk, where she is sitting cross legged with her laptop in front of her. It’s unclear to Hordak whether she recently put on pajamas for bed, or if she never changed from the night before.

“It’s just --” Hordak imagines telling Entrapta the truth -- that she makes even Fresno seem fun -- and quickly discards the idea, especially given how unconcerned she clearly feels about the partnership change. “Weaver should reward us for our work. Not drag us down.”

Entrapta ceases tapping on her keyboard for long enough to look at him and smirk. “Just don’t do what she says,” she suggests.

Oddly enough, that did not occur to Hordak until now.

“We’ll keep working together and share our findings with our new ‘partners,’” she explains. “I already talked to my guy about it. Rogelio’s fine with the arrangement.” Clearly, Entrapta has been solving the problem while Hordak has been whining about Doctor Weaver’s shortcomings.

He would tell her he’s been an idiot, but she obviously already knows.

“Who do you have?” Entrapta interrupts his thoughts.

Hordak extracts the paper from his jeans pocket. “Perfuma del Fiore.” He wrinkles his nose.

“I’ll get her to agree. She owes me a favor.”

“What did you do for her?”

“I rigged up some grow lights in her room. I hear that her weed is pretty good, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

“Alright, let’s do it.” Hordak smirks, his confidence restored. “We have to make the deception a little less obvious, though. The last thing we need is an accusation of cheating.”

A month later, the astronomy class is issued its final grades. Entrapta and Rogelio outrank Hordak and Perfuma by one percentage point, and Hordak doesn’t regret the planned scoring difference one bit.

*_*_*_*_*_*

**Crash into me**

Hordak sends his transfer application to Stanford on the first day of Spring semester. As the manila envelope thunks to the bottom of the big blue mailbox, his stomach drops, and not in the exciting rollercoaster way. Maybe the grades and the internship won't be enough. Worse, maybe they will.

That afternoon, he receives an IM from Entrapta inquiring if he wants some of her extra memory cards. He says yes and invites her over right away, and when his stomach drops this time, it does so the good way.

It’s not long before Entrapta is bounding through Hordak’s door wearing a pair of cargo pants and a sleeveless turtleneck. She swings a plastic bag full of computer parts onto his bed and places a stack of ripped CDs next to his boombox, and even before Hordak has the chance to offer her a Mr. Pibb, she’s on the floor under his desk, elbow deep in his CPU and humming away to some squeaky track by the Spice Girls.

Entrapta installs the RAM quickly, but evidently she decides that Hordak needs several software upgrades, too, so she begins pounding away at the keyboard, stopping only to look at her notes or sip her pop. Some time past midnight she stops typing and asks, “You know what band I hate that I bet you hate too?”

“Dave Matthews,” Hordak guesses. He doesn’t look up from the astrophysics homework spread out on his duvet.

“Ha! You’re right!" she exclaims, obviously shocked. "I could kiss you for that."

Hordak jerks his head up. “What? Oh, heh,” he grunts. It’s just an expression. She doesn’t mean it.

“I mean it,” she says.

Hordak swallows.

Entrapta scooches her chair over to the bed where Hordak is still flopped on his belly. Her eyes are shining as bright as they did when the school announced the groundbreaking for the Downing Planetarium. “I never thought about it before now, but -- I could do it. And not just because we finally agree about some music.” She sidles the chair even closer. “I’d kiss you, if you wanted me to.”

_ I want you to_, he thinks as he looks up at her, but his lips seem incapable of forming the words.

She must have misread his silence, because she says, quietly, “It’s cool if you don’t, though,” and she moves as if to stand up.

Somewhere in Hordak’s reptilian brain, he accesses a critical reflex, and his arm shoots out, and he grabs Entrapta’s wrist.

She freezes.

“Yes,” he rasps. “Please kiss me.”

He should probably scramble up and sit next to her, but maybe that would freak her out. Or him. He’s also pretty freaked out. So he just lays there, holding her arm, not moving, freaking out.

“OK then,” Entrapta murmurs after what feels like a very long time, and she slowly she slides from the chair until she is kneeling on the floor. With her face level to Hordak’s, her eyes travel across his face and down his neck, and she lingers at the spot where his birthmark spirals up above the collar of his tee shirt, brownish-red against his pasty skin, but as usual she doesn’t comment on it. And then she tilts her head close to his, so close he can practically taste her fruity lip balm.

_ What are you waiting for, loser,_ Hordak can almost hear Catra drawl, and so he inhales and leans forward and finally presses his mouth to Entrapta’s.

His teeth clink against hers, and she shifts and holds his cheeks in her hands, and he nearly runs out of breath. “You want to, um, come onto the bed with me?” he croaks.

“Sure,” she smiles, and she flops right onto his homework, but at the moment he can’t muster a single ounce of concern for his crinkling papers.

He rolls onto his side and reaches out to caress Entrapta’s arm. Should he kiss her again? Wait for her to make the next move? He tries to recall what Prime and Catra said about sneaking Winsor School girls into the family condo in Jamaica Plain, but all he can remember is the two of them bragging about drinking Uncle Skeletor’s scotch.

Entrapta wraps her arms around Hordak’s neck and kisses him again. She slides her tongue into his mouth, and when he places his hand on the curve of her waist, she arches her body against his.

“God, you feel good,” he mumbles, then immediately regrets the inane commentary. He must sound like a total dumbass.

It must be alright, though, because Entrapta squirms in his arms and says, “You do too.” She runs her fingers down his shirt and smiles up at him.

“I’ll Make Love to You” starts playing on the boombox, and that’s when it occurs to Hordak that this makeout session isn’t as spontaneous as Entrapta has, thus far, led him to believe.

“Were you -- were you planning this?” he asks, leaning away from her.

She bites her lip and glances away and looks really, really cute. “Not exactly. It was more of an experiment where I introduced a few new variables."

If Hordak weren’t so turned on, he would be annoyed as hell. Hella annoyed. Fucking California. “Is your experiment a success?" He asks, equal parts mad and horny.

She guffaws. "I'm not sure. I need more data."

“Yeah,” Hordak says. “Me too.” He kisses her again.

*_*_*_*_*_*

**One in a Million**

When she takes off his shirt and can see how the port-wine stain travels from his jugular to his wrist and wraps halfway around his torso, she doesn’t recoil, and she doesn’t ask questions. She traces her fingers along the birthmark’s border, and then she follows the same route with her tongue.

When he takes off her pants and sees a flat, shiny blemish on her hip, he nuzzles the spot, but he does ask the question. “Some seniors were teasing me about being a freshman in chem class, and they knocked a Bunsen burner onto me,” she explains. Hordak clenches his fists and kisses the scar.

When they are finally completely naked, Hordak smiles in contentment. Here in this stuffy room, with their bodies glowing under the green Christmas lights, with Aaliyah crooning on the stereo, with the cool January night air wafting in from the window -- here, in Fresno, in Entrapta’s arms, is the only place that Hordak would choose to be.

*_*_*_*_*_*

**Make it Last Forever**

The Stanford acceptance letter arrives. Hordak can start in the fall as a junior. The school doesn’t offer a full ride, but the financial aid package is remarkably generous.

Prime would probably say that any education lacking military affiliation is a waste of time, but he wouldn’t be able to sneer about worthless state school degrees anymore. Catra would act like she didn’t care, but she’d almost certainly tear her Barnard diploma off the wall in a jealous rage.

Entrapta . . . well, Entrapta doesn’t know anything about it. Hordak could tell her now, since she’s banging on his door, cheerfully demanding that he let her in.

“Whatcha got there?” she asks as she steps across the threshold, poking a finger at the letter in his hand.

“Nothing. Just paperwork,” he lies.

“Bo-ring!” Entrapta sings as she sloughs off her backpack and wet raincoat and boots.

“Yep,” Hordak says, and he looks at the letter once more. Then he drops it in the trash.

His stomach flips, and he imagines his family berating him. But then Entrapta catches him around the collar and plants a big wet kiss right on his face. He wipes her saliva from his cheek and smiles at her. He’s made the right choice.

Entrapta wraps her arms around his waist. “So babe, have you heard about Y2K? It could be fun for us.”

He drapes his long arm over her shoulder and kisses her forehead. “Tell me all about it.”

*_*_*_*_*_*_*

[the end]

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t really hate Dave Matthews, but those who do, do. Including, evidently, Entrapta and Hordak :)
> 
> I was pretty careful to make sure I got the dates right on song releases, geographical locations, laws, brands, etc., but if your spotted a mistake, feel free to call it out.
> 
> Thank you for reading, kudos, bookmarking, and especially (especially!!!!!) comments.


End file.
